Clever
by superslacker
Summary: Two dead raptors and a deep abdominal wound later, Robert Muldoon begins his fight for survival abandoned on Isla Nublar.
1. Chapter 1

**Clever**

**I**

The ferns dripped with gore as the jungle's background noise slowly resumed from its tense silence. Panting, Muldoon flipped over to his stomach, sending a fresh gout of blood pulsing from the ragged gash in his side. The shotgun barrel was still hot, but his mind hardly registered the comparatively minor pain as he grabbed its reassuring weight, listening intently for the packmates of the two velociraptors that had been ripped in half by his buckshot.

Nothing but the birdcalls and the monkeys. Could he truly have been this lucky? Muldoon realized that he had not dared breathe in over a minute and his lungs were burning enough to be distinguishable from his actual wounds. He exhaled slowly, replaying the events in his head.

_"We can make it if we run."_

_ No, we can't._

_ "Why not?"_

_ Because, we're being hunted... (wasn't it obvious?)_

_ "Oh God..."_

_ In the bushes, straight ahead... It's alright._

_ "Like hell it is!" (The note of panic brought back memories of Africa, a picnic by comparison!)_

_ (The shotgun's buttstock presses into his shoulder comfortingly. There it is, grey on the green.)_

_ Run, towards the shed. I've got her. _

_ (He had wanted to do this for months. Should have, despite Hammond's protests. The botanist runs; the 'raptor stays with him. Good. She's in a sporting mood today.)_

She wasn't very sporting at all, in the end though, was she? ...flushing the dangerous quarry towards your hunting partner, how very basic. How very frighteningly advanced. How buggered he was. How everyone was. Absolutely _buggered_. He allowed himself another five breaths before he slowly, painfully, pushed himself to his knees, then raised to his feet, steadying himself with the shotgun, careful to not point the barrel at himself as he did so. _The best habits don't die hard, they never die at all,_ he mused.

The blood leaking from his side was starting to soak down his shirttails and into his shorts. He stripped the shredded garment from his torso and tied it as tight as he could stand against the deep trenches the talons had carved into his left side, just high enough to not disembowel him instantly. He had lost a lot of blood, but he might make it if he could find a better dressing soon. And if something else hadn't picked up on the coppery scent of violence already. And if everyone else wasn't already dead. Too many _ifs, _for his taste, but there was nothing for it. Getting his bearings, he decided to head back to the Command Center—the botanist was on her own, bless her heart. He staggered back down the game trail, when something nagged him to stop.

The trophy. Of course. He pulled his own talon, a Kabar fighting knife, from its sheath. It was a gift from a former U.S. Marine with whom he'd hunted hippos with on the White Nile, so many years ago. The big, redfaced man who ended up losing a foot to a black mamba on the way back to camp, cursing floridly in his flat Yank accent... Muldoon shook his head; if there was a worst possible time for a trip down memory lane, this was surely it. The amber eye of the big mama stared balefully up at him, seeming to calculate even in death. He knelt over the carcass, wincing at the pain in his side, and cut the talon from its right foot, placing it flesh and all into his shorts' cargo pocket. Pushing himself to his feet once more, he resumed his painful journey back to dubious safety.


	2. Chapter 2

**II**

Pushing through the ferns, the Australian hunter's mind swam in a haze of thirst and trauma and memories. The crocodile who'd pulled one of their porters under in Ethiopia, retreating into deeper water where the boy had ostensibly drowned. He was only fifteen. What was his name? John something. His brother hardly cared, just another victim of the river. He hadn't actually seen the crocodile at all, it happened too fast, but for some reason he saw _her_ eyes on its scaly face in his mind. He knew then that he always would see those eyes, _figuring things out_, in all his nightmares, assuming he lived long enough to have the luxury of sleep again.

Muldoon stumbled on a log but was up again in a flash, the burning in his side having become just another constant sensory input. Acknowledged. Good Copy. He was a corporal in the Australian Army again, in the jungles of Vietnam, his first taste of Hell. He hated the jungle then and he hated it now. He remembered coming off the plane, noticing immediately the stark difference between the boisterous boys deploying with him and the haunted veterans chain-smoking to stop their hands shaking while they waited to go back to the world. Quiet young Corporal Muldoon, platoon sharpshooter, setting a company record for confirmed kills that still stood as of six years ago, when he'd run into his former squad leader in a bar in Johannesburg.

Those reflexes had killed the Viet Cong, and they'd killed the 'raptors. Wasn't man The Most Dangerous Game, after all? Hah. That fella'd never met a velociraptor, lucky bloke, and had the good sense to die before Hammond's nonsense ever came to light. Hammond. He'd known Hammond for a long time, he had, but that wasn't going to stop him from choking him out with his own stupid cane. How many times, _how many times_ had he recommended extermination? Muldoon knew. When he looked down from the enclosure wall at the Big Mama, he knew he was looking at himself seven million years removed, and he _knew_.

The sweat poured off of him, refusing to evaporate in the humid tropical air, failing to cool him. He was already close to heat exhaustion, if not stroke; losing blood made it harder to regulate the body's temperature in addition to the rapid dehydration. At this point water might be a bigger priority than the Command Center. He stopped his pitiful stagger and looked around, a lifetime of survival training flickering dully through his exhausted mind. These vines, one of them had water, right? He hacked at one with the Kabar and sucked desperately at it. There was no gushing of sweet life-giving moisture like he'd feverishly hoped, but there was a trickle of bitter fluid and that was enough. He hacked at another, and continued his death march.

Abruptly, the forest gave way to a clearing of tall grass. Had he gotten lost? A big game hunter, Muldoon knew what could lurk in that seemingly-empty golden ocean. He squinted, but couldn't see any of the telltale rustling, the stalks moving contrary to the soft undulation of the wind. There was a snapping from the woodline across the grass, and he swung the shotgun into the pocket of his shoulder with practiced swiftness, but it was only one of the long-necked herbivore-types, the brontosaurus or brachiosaurus or whatever. It was foraging peacefully, unaware of the new circumstances that now defined its survival, but its presence was reassuring to him. He took a deep breath, and started his crossing.

Emerging from the grass some moments later, he marveled at his continued good luck—and looking down, he found the double bootprints of him and the botanist on their ill-fated journey to the power shed. He had found the path, and his salvation was close at hand.


End file.
